After hearing his name announced to the cheering stadium crowd as a new state champion in prep track, hopping a fence to hug loved ones and thumping a fist against his heart to thank a deceased friend for the inspiration to sail over a high jump bar set 6 feet, 10 inches above the ground, Dave Day happily trotted to the podium 20 minutes later to receive his first-place medal, only to be informed: Never mind.

“What happened?” Day asked Friday, after his thrill of victory melted into bewildered agony of defeat in the short time it took a bureaucrat to thumb through the fine print of a rule book.

Citing a technicality that even aficianados of the sport had trouble understanding, meet officials made the right call by taking first place away from Day, a senior who had received his diploma 48 hours earlier from ThunderRidge High School. Think that go-forth-and-conquer graduation speech warned there was a heart-crushing disappointment waiting just around the corner to blindside him?

“It doesn’t feel good telling a kid he didn’t win. But if I declare the wrong winner, that’s even worse. It makes me sick to my stomach,” said Rhonda Blanford-Green, assistant commissioner of the Colorado High School Activities Association. “I can sleep well, because in the end, we gave the right athlete a first-place medal he deserved.”

But know what’s plain wrong?

No adult bothered to tell Day that state track champion had been erased from his resume until he stepped on the pyramid-shaped victory podium and found Coronado High senior Travvis Scott quietly sitting on the top step painted with the No. 1.

Ever witnessed justice served so coldly it makes you want to cry?

This is to take nothing away from Scott, whose 4.4 grade-point average might be more stunning than the fact he also jumped 6-10 in a battle against Day so compelling it attracted the same oohs and ahs you hear from the audience at Cirque du Soleil.

Upon further review, Scott was declared the Class 5A champ because he had fewer total misses during the competition in a tiebreaking procedure so nitpicky that Day would have won if both athletes had bowed out one round earlier with the bar set a single inch lower.

“I went to my coach and told him: ‘I got second place. But I don’t care. I jumped a personal best and set a school record. So I’m good,’ ” Scott said. “Then they started looking in the rule book.”

Life is just like a sports movie, except usually it’s more complicated than a Hollywood ending.

For the first time all track season, Day had pulled out a special T-shirt to wear at the state meet. It was a reminder of a childhood buddy, Kyle Blakeman.

“We pulled a lot of shenanigans together in elementary school,” Day said. “There’s this one picture I remember of the two of us in the fourth grade. We’re wearing Winnie the Pooh costumes that are way too small for us. It wasn’t Halloween. We were just two crazy friends messing around.”

Remember the magic of Rocktober?

Blakeman was the ThunderRidge sophomore who died from cancer, but not before befriending Clint Hurdle of the Rockies and giving him a lucky number 64 that the manager scrawled for good luck on top of the Colorado lineup card during an improbable run to the World Series in 2007.

“I know Kyle is up there, and he’s here helping me,” Day said, turning his eyes toward heaven. “At graduation a couple days ago, we read his name to keep the memory alive.”

Sometimes, what reminds us we’re alive is not the warm sun on the back, but a bitter taste on the tongue. There’s no excuse for the tears Day fought back because he was misled into believing the state championship belonged to him.

But before every jump on a spring afternoon nearly three years after his friend Blakeman died at age 15, Day pulled off the blue shirt adorned with “KB” on his chest and placed it gently on the infield grass of Jefferson County Stadium. Then, the tall, muscular ThunderRidge senior glanced down at his white shoes to put himself in the proper frame of mind to defy gravity.

There was one word printed in black ink on each shoe. When Day put his feet together and rocked into action, running step after hastening step until he launched himself high over the bar, there was a message to be clearly seen:

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